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Taking Whiteness Personally: Learning to Teach Testimonial Reading and Writing in the College Literature Classroom

Taking Whiteness Personally: Learning to Teach Testimonial Reading and Writing in the College... Taking Whiteness Personally: Learning to Teach Testimonial Reading and Writing in the College Literature Classroom Brenda Daly Although aware of an emerging specialty called “whiteness studies,” I did not begin to study my own white history until I read Jane Davis’s The White Image in the Black Mind: A Study of African American Literature (2000). While reading Davis’s book, whiteness became a personal issue for me, not only because Jane is a colleague and friend, but also because I was shaken by her answer to the question, “What is a white person?” She explains that in the black mind—that is, in the mind of African American writers—white people are “weak,” “a burden to blacks,” “dismissive,” “off -putting, even when friendly,” “ignorant of blacks’ having fi gured them out,” and “afraid to confront their own bigotry” (133–36). After reading three pages of this cata- log of descriptors, I felt my anger growing: Why should I listen, I wondered, while someone tears down my hard-won self-esteem? Why should I heed someone who tells me that I am “in need of self-analysis,” that I am “repul- sively, self-denigratingly, and self-congratulatorily disrespectful,” “jealous,” “corrupted by power,” “self-aggrandizingly sexist,” “presumptuous,” “self- righteously dangerous,” “confused,” http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Pedagogy Duke University Press

Taking Whiteness Personally: Learning to Teach Testimonial Reading and Writing in the College Literature Classroom

Pedagogy , Volume 5 (2) – Apr 1, 2005

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Copyright
© 2005 Duke University Press
ISSN
1531-4200
eISSN
1533-6255
DOI
10.1215/15314200-5-2-213
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Taking Whiteness Personally: Learning to Teach Testimonial Reading and Writing in the College Literature Classroom Brenda Daly Although aware of an emerging specialty called “whiteness studies,” I did not begin to study my own white history until I read Jane Davis’s The White Image in the Black Mind: A Study of African American Literature (2000). While reading Davis’s book, whiteness became a personal issue for me, not only because Jane is a colleague and friend, but also because I was shaken by her answer to the question, “What is a white person?” She explains that in the black mind—that is, in the mind of African American writers—white people are “weak,” “a burden to blacks,” “dismissive,” “off -putting, even when friendly,” “ignorant of blacks’ having fi gured them out,” and “afraid to confront their own bigotry” (133–36). After reading three pages of this cata- log of descriptors, I felt my anger growing: Why should I listen, I wondered, while someone tears down my hard-won self-esteem? Why should I heed someone who tells me that I am “in need of self-analysis,” that I am “repul- sively, self-denigratingly, and self-congratulatorily disrespectful,” “jealous,” “corrupted by power,” “self-aggrandizingly sexist,” “presumptuous,” “self- righteously dangerous,” “confused,”

Journal

PedagogyDuke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2005

References